I am interested in using iCalendar and vCards with RoR. How are
iCalendar and/or vCards stored in tables? Is the information in a
vCard, for example, stored in a vCard table with one record per vCard
vEvent or should the table structure be normalized with separate
tables for name, address, telephone and etc? Or should the data
structure be normalized using multiple tables? If they must be
normalized tables, is there a recommended structure?
There are several ways to do it as you have mentioned. Each option has
its tradeoffs. You have to consider the application requirements and
use your judgement to come up with a good solution. If the address,
telephone etc are being used in other screens as part of some other
model, then you can reuse those tables. Are you using the vpim library
for the vCard?
I want to use it as a method for users to import their information. I
do want to be able to run queries on the data like time associated
data like DTSTART and DTEND. I would tend to believe this would be
too resource intensive if an entire iCalendar event was stored in one
record. One would have to create objects for every iCalendar record
before any data comparison could be made.